Joseph Dejacque, one of the first individuals to create in theory and in practice the split that would form between the anarchists and the state socialists/communists, wrote "let's make war on society" in the early 1800's. While he attacked statists and even the anarchist Proudhon on the basis of questions of personal liberty, he saw the ideal environment for individual freedom being a communist society.
Max Stirner, who decried the (humanist) communist cause because it puts the greater good of society in the place of God's cause as the dominant ideology, an ideology opposed to individual freedom and insurrection, was involved in forming a milk cooperative. Interestingly enough, this was the only project he is known for aside from his writing.
Renzo Novatore, possibly the most extremely anti-social anarchist I can think of who wrote much, at one point declared to his anarcho-communist comrades that he would fight alongside them in the destruction of the existing society, and that when they established their new communist society he would fight to destroy that one as well.
The current social vs. anti-social debate in anarchism is in many ways reminiscent of and refers to this history, while at the same time it is unique. The consciously anti-social tendency is probably strongest among insurgents in Chile, where one can see that phrase as well as related terms openly embraced in text after text. Or one could point to various individuals influenced by Ted Kaczynski's theory and practice, which is highly anti-social and is centrally about a critique of modern society and particularly leftism (and is significantly different from individualist anarchism, operating on a different plane). But perhaps the most intense episode in this debate happened recently in the wake of the Marfin Bank firebombing in Athens, Greece on May 5, 2010 in which three workers died from a fire started by anarchists during massive demonstrations. While I'm not familiar with all of the debate since it occurred in Greek and little has been translated to English, it seems that many anarchists blamed the deaths on what they described as anti-social elements in the milieu. These elements were defined in terms that will probably sound familiar to many of us: abandoning much of the anarchist tradition, they rejected the idea of the revolutionary potential of the masses and rather than placing sole blame upon the bourgeois class, chose instead to direct their critique at both the leaders as well as the masses whose submission gives them their power. They also rejected the ideology of the oppressed's liberation from their oppression through their position as the oppressed and its social movements (reminiscent here of Nietzsche among others). This contempt for the workers, some argued, led a few anarchists to not be concerned about whether their actions would cause the death of bank workers.
Risking the possibility of being dead wrong, I will go out on a limb and say that I don't buy this attempt to establish a firm connection between anti-social ideas and the actions of the arsonists, especially when the anarchists making this argument clearly have a double agenda: to distance themselves from the arsonists to clear their own feelings of guilt while promoting their own ideology of social revolution in hopes of doing away with a plague that they were by all accounts already very interested in stomping out or at least controlling. (During the December 2008 insurrection, insurrectionary anarchists who had set plenty a fire in their day were trying to direct the younger, more wild insurgents to not burn certain buildings such as local businesses.) For the most part, it doesn't seem that any of the anarchists in the "anti-social tendency" in Greece (it's unclear to me, by the way, whether the anti-socials chose this term to explain their differences with the social revolutionaries or whether some chose to embrace the term that the social revolutionaries threw at them) acted very differently in practice from insurrectionary anarchists, at least not to the point of attacking anyone who is not a cop, politician, boss, etc. But I've heard it claimed that a couple of actions distinguish themselves, so I will examine them. The first was an action by a little-known group (the name escapes me) who hijacked a commuter train, forced everyone off it, and set it on fire. Their communique pointed out that the workers' daily activity is what reproduces the system they are against, and that this action was to deny the workers their daily commute. No one was hurt, and it seems by all accounts an exemplary action, with even the social anarchists only objecting to their rhetoric and not the action itself. The other was an action of the Conspiracy of Cells of Fire who placed a bomb in an area where the ruling party leader was giving a speech during the campaign season. The communique declares that their hatred and contempt was not only for the politician but also for the masses who went to hear him speak. However, their intention was not to hurt anyone, and they called in a bomb threat to force the evacuation of the area and prevent the speech from taking place. The area was evacuated and no one was hurt. Compare these with Mario Buda's bombing of Wall Street...
...to be continued. i actually exceeded the maximum length. holy fuck...
